6 April 2022: Cairo

Our hotel in Cairo served a slab of honeycomb every morning with breakfast. 

Gib tried a piece of honeycomb on our last morning. He found it waxy and chewy. It was tasty until it wasn't.

We took photos with our tour guides in the hotel lobby. Our family was on the yellow bus and our main tour guides were Marwa, an archaeologist who presented all of the historical information and Ibrahaim, the guy who passed out tickets and made sure no one got left behind. We don't know the names of the two guides on the right in the photo.

We made a couple of stops in Cairo. The first was at the Egypt Museum in Cairo which opened in 1902. Early archaeologists were basically tomb robbers and grabbed any treasures they found for personal collections. As a result, there are fantastic collections of Egyptian artifacts in museums in London, Paris, Berlin and New York. By the 1900s, Egypt wanted to maintain control of the artifacts and preserve the history learned from scientific archaeology and passed laws limiting the export of antiquities. The Egyptian Museum in Cairo holds some of the most famous treasures of the ancient world. We'll just highlight a few with connections to some of the other things we saw in Egypt.

Representing one of life's ironies, this is the only remaining statue of Khufu, the builder of the great pyramid. While this ivory statue is only about 3 inches tall, it is detailed and expressive.

In contrast, this is a giant statue of his son, Khafre, who built the second largest pyramid. The statue is carved from diorite, a kind of igneous rock. Pharaohs are typically portrayed athletically to show their power and vitality.

Khafre is seated on a throne that is decorated with papyrus, the sign of Lower Egypt and lotus flowers, the sign of Upper Egypt, showing he ruled over united Egypt.

A falcon, representing the protection of the god Horus, is perched on Khafre's shoulders.

This statue of Ramses II as a child also has a falcon for protection. The craftsmanship is exquisite.

This is the head of Hatshepsut made of painted limestone. Her statues always show her as a man since that was more palatable to Egyptians. Hatshepsut ruled for about 20 years. After her death, her bitter stepson, Thutmose III, smashed her statues and tried to remove her name from monuments and temples. However, he missed some of them as we saw her obelisk and cartouches at Karnak and other artifacts remain in Egypt and abroad. We also saw the fabulous treasures of King Tut, but we weren't allowed to take photos at the museum. King Tut's exhibit will soon move to the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza which will open in November 2022.

There are unpleasant things about traveling in a tour, but an unexpected benefit from our kids' point of view is the tour guides limited our stay at every stop. We might have spent a few more hours wandering the museum, but we had to leave with our tour.

Our last stop in Cairo was the Hanging Church, also known as Saint Virgin Mary's Coptic Orthodox Church.  It is one of the oldest Christian churches in Egypt, dating back to the 200s AD.

Coptic Christians believe that Mark, the guy who wrote one of the gospels in the New Testament, brought Christianity to Egypt in 42 AD. Coptic means Egyptian. He is honored as the first patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox religion. About 10% of Egyptians are Coptic Christian. Mostly they are treated with respect, but they have had periods of persecution, most recently from 2011-2017 when the Muslim Brotherhood was gaining influence in Egypt.

The church has been reconstructed and renovated many times. It is still used as a church today.

The backs of the pews are decorated with little fish, an early sign of Christianity.

This photo shows why the church is called the Hanging Church.  It was built on top of Roman battlements. The glass in the floor in this photo allows you to see about 20 feet down to the ground. When it was built, the church would have been high in the air, but over time, the street level of Cairo has come up and the church is only a couple of flights of stairs above the ground.

This photo shows the beautiful courtyard outside the church.

Our tour received the good news that everyone tested negative for Covid and we would all be able to travel to Israel. We had an unusual experience at the Cairo airport. After checking our suitcases and waiting for our boarding time, we rode a bus out to our airplane that was parked on the tarmac. Then each of us had to find our suitcases from the pile on the ground and help load them onto the plane by placing them on a conveyor belt connected to the cargo area of the plane. 

After a short flight, we landed in Tel Aviv, Israel. Our first task was to get another covid test. There was a giant tent connected to the airport that efficiently screened every person arriving in the country. Once everyone in our group had been tested, we took a bus to the Olive Tree hotel. We had to quarantine until we got the results of our Israeli covid test. We could leave our hotel rooms and mingle with people from our group as long as we stayed in the hotel.